Thursday, September 17, 2015

Dance, baby, dance.
Get up and move. Shake your
thing. That’s it, make it groove. Use your hips. Get down into the floor. Arch your back more. Work it!

Those are various performance phrases used in the dance
world to encourage excellence in the performer.
Uncomfortable? Did it make you
think I’d finally snapped? (Don’t answer
that). A dancer needs to have his/her
performance graded early on so that he/she can make corrections to the movement
in the dance. If a choreographer has
developed a sequence of movement to tell a story and thoughtfully chosen a
piece of music to compliment the story, it’s vital that the dancer perform the
movement exactly to match the intention of the story. Real time performance review is necessary.

In the case of the dancer, the choreographer is there
teaching the dance. He/She can then
provide timely feedback, such as listed above, and encourage the dancer to move
differently or with more precision when working to execute the story through
dance. Travis Wall, one of the best current
choreographers, has to be unyielding in seeing his vision executed and so has
to watch his dancers often and provide commentary. A dancer then adjusts in real time. And when the performance is shared with an
audience, the efforts are displayed, and in Travis’s case, usually without
flaw.

Intentionally taking the time to watch the scenes of
performance that our employees create is a responsibility of management. It is not to sit in an office and hope they
are doing what they should be. It’s not
just looking at numbers at the end of a day or week, and then make grandiose
decisions about staffing and product or service implementation. The repetition of bad choices made in this
context overflows into poor corporate culture, low gross sales, inferior
candidates and frustrated management.

Watch what’s happening in the “dance” scenes you’re creating
at work. Give feedback. It does not need to be done via the official
performance review annual form. It doesn’t
have to be a quarterly review. It CAN
include those things, but that’s not all it is.

As a kid, when I was doing my homework, my mom would look
over my shoulder every so often to check.
If the writing was rushed and sloppy, she would tell me to erase it and
write it again. The longer she took to
check in on me left open the possibility that I would have more to erase. If she caught me after only doing a few, it
was more manageable to correct the behavior and the remaining work was done
neater. It’s the same for management. Observe often.

Micromanagement, by the way, is not the same as observing
often. A course correction is the
responsibility of the manager by knowing why and how staff are travelling a
certain road. A micromanager is telling
staff how to move their left foot forward, and then the right foot, and then the
left again, and then the right and so on.
Travis can dance the choreography he creates himself, but the point is to
take that vision and entrust it to the skill sets demonstrated in the dancers
he works with regularly. The cause is
spread to a wider circle and therefore a wider impact.

Give staff the opportunity to perform. Tell them the objectives and watch what they
do. And along the way, affirm what’s working and
advise on what should look or be different.
Keep coming back to the mission or purpose of the work. Managers have to be involved in what their
teams are doing, with consistency and investment. Come up alongside those employees who are
working to make the mission happen and encourage them. Praise and critique are encouraging, if it
comes from an involved, invested perspective.
Do your staff see you that way?

The surprise in good performance review is that it seems
very much like conversation. It feels
very much like smart people sitting together to get better at the
responsibilities they have. It opens the
door for a deeper understanding of the support, tools and practice needed. And it also allows for honest dialogue, due
to the consistency of review, regarding who can do what’s needed. Sometimes staff will even call themselves out
to say that they don’t have the full skill set required. And those are employees you want to keep for
a long time, even if it means a role change.

Like me, for instance.
I know that in my mind, I dance with as much passion and skill as Alex
Wong and could absolutely handle the choreography of Travis Wall. And though I have been known to “get down”, the
vision in my mind won’t make it a reality.
When I leap around the house with my daughters, they remind me, too,
that I might not quite have the skills to dance or to choreograph. Seriously? Have you seen me do the Cha-Cha
Slide? Breathtaking.